I Flew over Iran to Get to Gandhi's House

by emptywheel

I flew over Iran for the first time the other day. Turkey, Iran, Pakistan (I don't think we flew over Afghan airspace), into India. It took longer than I expected (or maybe it was just that part of the day when I realized I should have slept and was beginning to agonize over things). So for hours, I kept looking up and seeing a map of Iran, with an avatar of my plane flying over it, as if we were the only thing in Iranian airspace. We flew over Turkey, then south of  Tehran, then down close to the Gulf, presumably to avoid the mountains.

For hours, I contemplated the geography that we've caused so much trouble in. Kurdistan. Afghanistan. Pakistan with its own increasing instability. And Iran was in the middle of it, a big target.

At about that time, Sy Hersh was no doubt putting the finishing touches on his latest article, reporting that Bush has intensified plans for war, including a major air attack,

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups.

Now, I think Hersh makes a point of publicizing possibilities to try to raise the concern level among average Americans. As he raised the possibility that we would attack Iran last June, which didn't happen. So it may be he raised the possibility of using bunker busters so someone besides Meteor Blades would contemplate what that means. But things certainly seem to be coming to a head, of late. Already, apparently, out there in the Arabian Sea, some of the big ships that look like oil tankers may be active carriers, simulating using bunker busters.

American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.

But the flight over Iran brought me to Mumbai, today, and a visit to Gandhi's house. The house, like many things I saw today, is in the middle of repairs. Photos have been removed from the walls, one floor is closed. And unlike the Price of Wales museum, there were few Indians at the Gandhi museum, just the several working there and one guiding an American woman around. But the museum-patrons were all westerners, a bunch of Europeans and Americans (and curiously, it was the one place in India where I didn't stick out as a woman traveling alone).

Which made me wonder. Why did the westerners, and not the Indians, go to Gandhi's house? The Gandhi museum was much more serene than the Prince of Wales museum, which had big groups of Indians, and much cooler than the parks.

But it seemed as if the westerners were on a pilgrimage to this place. Many of us were traveling alone. A group of Americans looked at the descriptions of Satyagraha and spoke openly about how we need someone like Gandhi, we need a movement.

Anyway, I came away with two thoughts from Gandhi's house. First, the simplicity. The one room with his futon and his spinning wheels and a few books. Nothing extraneous. But there was a certainly peacefulness to it.

And the appropriateness of his protests. Gandhi didn't just march in the streets. He destroyed western clothes and exhorted Indians to spin their own. He marched to the sea to make his own salt. He denied the British their means of exercising power over him, and in so doing, took on a position of strength.

I move on tomorrow out of Mumbai and onto my work, which seems like the most absurd thing in the world to be doing right now. A whole lot less appropriate than spinning my own cloth. But sometimes absurdity introduces you to odd juxtapositions. Like flying over Iran to get to Gandhi's house.

Update: Stupid misspelling of Gandhi's name fixed. I knew that looked wrong! Thanks folks.

Comments

[Mimikatz]

There aren't many Buddhists left in India either. Satyagraha, non-violent resistance, isn't too popular there or here these days, nor is searching for a meaning deeper than the glamor of material possessions.

Maybe in the aftermath of the Iranian War, when we have to pay $6 a gallon for what gas we can get and the dollar is worth even fewer tchotchkes than ever, those of us not waiting for the rapture will have time to contemplate those things.

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

Gandhi.

[lukery]

off topic - EW i saw you mention over at booman's place that you were looking for a reference to karen kwiatkowski saying that Niger didn't come through OSP. it's here

[Observer]

Yes, Gandhi. Please.

[JohnLopresti]

I was surprised long after reading Ghandi's autobiography in a freshman literature class, to hear the critics describe his eccentricity, whereas his own tale told by himself in print seems more like an inner search for planetary peace in times of interracial tensions.
I like a more unobtrusive style of quest, though the person pictured in this link started a mid size school in the US which has a name something like peace, in existence still near the coastine in southern CA.

Planing in advance I thought you might stop on your itinerary in a curio shop and purchase a model of a building, which floats to take with you when you attend a panel in a few months, but perhaps other souveniers are more appropriate. You would know best. I had considered some background research on one of the other speakers to appear on that panel, and found a drawing of the famous beach alongside the faculty housing at the college which Amb-W attended; according to his official biography, and according to a less reverent autobiographical interview the years of his attendance were a difficult time to be trying to attend the University in Isla Vista, as this onine historical retrospective shows in somewhat extravagant terms.

[janinsanfran]

Nonviolent action derives its power from the sacrifice made by its practitioners. For the last thirty years or so in the United States, much non-violent "action" has been more a form of theater practiced by well-meaning middle class white people. The recent immigrant marches had a flavor suggesting we might see a more authentic variant.

[orionATL]

lukery:

thanks

great read.

[Sara]

I just finished Taylor Branch's final book in the Martin Luther King Trilogy, At Canaan's Edge, and the demnise of non-violence on the American Scene is one of Branch's major themes. What he does is Place King, with his firm belief in and commitment to non-violence in a dynamic sandwich -- Black Power and at least verbal assent to violent resistance on one side, and the Violence of the Vietman war on the other -- with King constantly being pressured to lend his personhood to an anti-war movement he had no hand in constructing, and which he was not certain was honestly committed to non-violent direct action as a philosophy as opposed to an occassional tactic. The third Branch volume covers four years -- Selma to Memphis -- early 65 through April, 1968.

By the time of King's death he was about the only Civil Rights movement figure still on the record as totally committed to Non-Violence, and unwilling to consider alternativ philosophies. It is ironic that an essentially moral and non-violent movement accomplished major success -- 64 Civil Rights Bill, Voting Rights -- depending primarily on this philosophy and its tactics, but with success then walked away from most of it at the victory party -- and much the same happened in India after 1947.

[kim]

My family lived in DC and we'd only go to the mall when someone visited, maybe it's a similar thing with Gandhi's house.

India must be fun, I'd like to visit there.

[kim]

Make that "Mall."